


A house without kindness

by DarkAthena (seraphim_grace)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, F/M, Gore, Horror, M/M, Magic, Transformation, Viking AU, Viking Mythology - Freeform, Viking monsters, Vore, Wordcount: 15.000-25.000, butchering an animal for meat, probably vore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:14:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25647868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/DarkAthena
Summary: Driven to the far north by hunters Derek finds shelter in the snowViking AU
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 37
Kudos: 142
Collections: Fandom Cares





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EvanesDust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvanesDust/gifts).



> If I have missed any tags that you feel are necessary please let me know, this is a dark fic so there is that possibility.
> 
> Beta by ravewulf

"It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.”

 **Susan Hill** \- _the Haunting of Hill House_

  
The cold was different here in the hard north than where he had grown up in Scotland. The cold in Aberdeen had been brittle, sharp, like needles against the skin but the cold in Oppheim was syrupy like ice crystals in water that burned all the way down. He didn't seem able to get truly warm, his feet felt like blocks of lead and he kept having to scrunch them into his stockings to keep feeling there.

It was not even full winter yet and already the cold was oppressive and heavy, making it hard to breathe.

The axe had a pleasing heft to it and the thud rippled up his arms when it struck the wood, the sharp sting of fresh-cut pine blistering into the air with each blow. He could lose himself in the ease of it. The repetition. How it didn't matter where he was he could be back in Aberdeen waiting on his mother calling him in for supper even though she was six years dead. 

"You've done enough, lad," the old man said, from the door, "and supper's done." It was an easy exchange, supper for cutting firewood where the old man was getting too frail to do it himself. There were always newcomers in the small town who needed shelter and a hot meal, Derek among them. 

The man's small house was lit by a fire in the centre with two small straw mattresses laid to either side of it and several pots hanging on trivets, the blast of heat, meagre as it was, was enough to bring prickles of pain against the bare skin of his chest and back - he had stripped to the waist to make it easier to swing the axe. The old man squatted down on a stool beside the fire, stirring a pot with a ladle before he poured the contents into a leather mug, only handing it to Derek when he had his shirt and jacket back on. It was buttered ale, hot and slicked and spiced as it slid down his throat from greedy swallows. The old man just laughed and spooned in some more.

Derek had not told the man, when he had arrived in Oppheim, that he had not eaten in three days, or how tired he was from running, always running, from hard eyes that did their own accounting of who he was, no matter how far he travelled into the kingdom of Noregsveldet. He earned penning as he travelled, spending it as quickly as it came on food and shelter, the _ertog_ being worth less and less as the autumn dimmed and winter bloomed. 

After a supper that filled him to the brim, with hard rye bread, fresh goat butter and rabbit stew full of foraged vegetables and thickened with more of the butter, Derek leaned back against the wall, with a goatskin, still rich with wool, over his shoulders. "You going south?" the old man asked, but it was a suggestion, not a question. "This winter will be a bad one." Derek didn't answer. There were too many men with hard, searching eyes to the south. He could weather the winter better than they could, the winter might pin him down but it couldn't hurt him - not like they could. He could still feel the fire licking up his arms, even here in the brittle cold. He had hoped that the cold might exorcise the phantom flames, but they never had.

The fire haunted his dreams, the crackle and burr of it, and the smell, sweet like roasted pork and apples mixed with charcoal and soot.

Derek didn't answer the man, hunching in on himself. How could he explain why he needed to go north? How could he explain what had happened and not be thrown out into the cold? The people here were hard but kind, and he had been so alone that even this small companionship was almost forgotten to him and now was as necessary as water. He would leave in the morning, the ground hard as stone beneath his boots. He would follow the river, trading labour for food or penning. Not every steading was as expansive as this, sometimes he had to bed down with the animals, huddle for warmth in packed straw, in an outbuilding. This man offered his home, rude as it was, and the fire he cooked on. 

If Derek told him - he would be driven into the cold. His eyes would become as hard as those who hunted him. 

"This is an old country," the man said, pouring himself a small cup of something that smelled as sharp as shears, "and it remembers. The priests will tell you it's not true but the old gods linger in the folds of the mountains and the falls of the river, there are things that live in the wild places that the Christian god will tell you don't exist. In the woods are the _ljosalfar_ , tall and golden, who flit through the trees leading you to madness, the caves house the _svartalfar_ , blind-eyed and fish belly pale, waiting to smash your bones to make their bread; never answer the call of a lost child near the river, for that is how the _nock_ hunt, dragging you into the water to wear your skin over their own, the troll move in the mountains, hard as trees and hungering for man-meat, as large as a house and as cruel as winter. Then there are the old things, the ones best forgotten." He emptied the cup in a single swallow but didn't offer any to Derek when he poured himself a second, "there is word of a _draugr_ along the river, further to the North, in the mountain shadows."

Derek had never heard the word before so he asked, mangling the word in his mouth, "a _draugr_?"

The old man chuckled, "never accept payment in gold in this country, boy," he said, "for the _draugr_ do not forgive." He was warming to his topic, enjoying the thrill of fear he wove into Derek. "The old warriors were set to sea when they died, their longships burned to carry them to Valhalla but the jarl, they died old in their beds and needed to buy their way to the last land, to pay their way from Helheim to the last lands, so they were buried with their gold, hoards placed under the earth but it was easily taken, with none to protect it but the dead," he poured another glass and swallowed it down with a coughing gasp of a noise. "They'd take a child, raise it to be loyal, take it to the barrow and make them vow to protect their _jarl_ and his wealth, then slit his throat and bury him there. It was cruel but that was not all, because all that gold, someone was going to take it, and when they do the draugr rises, deathless, ascetic and old, relentless and endless.”

They hunt those who took the gold, they feast on their flesh and bring the gold back to the dead. They bring the winter to ease their movements, calling on the old gods of storm and hunger to speed their steps. The _ljosalfar_ can be tricked for they love riddles, the _svartalfar_ eluded for they are blind and will not leave their caves, wit can save you from the _nock_ and you could run into the bright sunlight to escape a troll, but the draugr, they will follow you to the ends of the world, they will kill you and the people who took the gold from you, they will follow endlessly. Don't accept gold in this land, boy, do not give the draugr reason to look your way with his dead eyes."

The old man was a storyteller, Derek thought, and how lucky he was to have accepted his offer of shelter, but he could not linger in the man's kindness, he would leave in the morning, with a full belly and warmed by the hot fire and buttered ale, and stories in Derek's ear.

\---

Derek awoke to a light fall of snow, the sort of mild snow that was common this early in the year that never lingered but hardened the soil to granite and left wet smears where it fell. The old storyteller made a light breakfast of fried lentil mash and noticed when Derek shoved his hands into his mitts with a frown. "One moment, lad," he said and opened a chest by the wall. From it, he pulled a pair of fur mitts with leather palms. "These are old," he said giving them to Derek, "but they'll keep you from losing your fingers. The winter will be hard this year, go south, double back on those that are chasing you," Derek went to protest, to deny that he was being chased but the old man cut him off, "I know the look," he said, "of someone running from something, but the north is not a place to run, lad, unless you have nowhere else in the world to go, especially not this year; not this winter."

Derek thanked him for the mitts, gratefully shoving his hands into them and immediately feeling their warmth, tying them in place over the wool gauntlets that he had worn since he had run from the men with the hard eyes and the torches aflame with purpose.

"This will be a terrible winter," the old man said to the sky, "the _draugr_ walks abroad and has called _Skadi_ to aid his steps, go south," he repeated, "this is not a year to be abroad in the North."

Derek thanked him again for his kindness and his warnings and then continued down the path to Oppheim, with the intent of following the river away from everything, from the men with their hard eyes who judged him as he passed, with the Latin shaping their mouths and just waiting to set him to the flame. He could not go south- nothing awaited him there but fire.

Derek followed the river, picking up work on fishing boats whose eyes got hard when he forgot himself and hauled in the nets, full and bulging, and more than a single man could pull, but feigned aching muscles and took the payment they offered, salted herring and penning he spent on shelter in the house of a widow, who let him lean against the wall beside her fire.

He woke up with a scream stuck in his throat and left before dawn.

The next few nights he found shelter in trees, unable to even bear the idea of fire near him.

The witch lived in a bend of the Sundsvollselvi. In a small cottage almost hidden by trees with fish hung outside to dry and smoke over damp fires.

She wore an apron dress and had silver spikes in her braid that formed a halo around the back of her head. In another life, Derek might have found her beautiful but she had a crown of antlers with a thick woven cloth braid over her forehead from which strings fell to hide her blind eyes from view. When she moved Derek could see them - like white beads in her head. They were the same colour as the thick braid pinned to her head.

Around her shoulders was a heavy wool cloak trimmed in white fur and to the hood, a wolf head had been affixed, draping over her shoulder to fix him with glass eyes. Her hand, which was bare, was wrapped around a tall staff with a deer skull affixed and thick gold jewellery, but her skin was covered in the hard stick language of the old gods, cut into her skin and made permanent with wode.

She turned to Derek and smiled, "come," she said and when she moved it was with the clitter-clatter of bones as if they were sewn into her skirts, and the hard tap tap tap of her staff on the shingle of the river's beach and how it sounded like the heddle of Laura's loom. When she realised that he was not following her she tilted her head again, "I will do you no harm, there are things about my home that need a good strong arm, and I promise you will not end up in my cookpot."

Derek snorted out a laugh, she was a small woman, not even an ell and half tall, and although she had curves, hidden under her apron dress - common in these parts - she was no threat to him, and he did not believe in the dark magics they claimed in this country. He had been raised in a civilised country. He could easily kill her and leave her corpse in her little cottage.

The cottage was almost picturesque; set back from the river with a peat roof and dark timbers, it had sheets of Roman isinglass in the windows to let in light and keep out the cold and a bread oven had been built against the stone chimney wall so the heat of her cookfire could also bake her bread. She had a vast garden of herbs and here and there staves with crossed branches and deer skull marked the boundaries. Strings of shells tingled in the wind, allowing the blind woman to hear her way.

Inside her house was simple, with a large work table in the centre, a workbench covered in pieces of bone and vessels along the wall furthest from the river, fish hung on lines in the path of the fire's smoke and two beds were built into the wall on either side of the door, lined with moss and covered in clean deep furs. 

A large copper pot hung over the fire and it smelled richly of fish and herbs and promised a fine dinner. If she heard him take greedy breaths through his nose she said nothing of it.

"Winter will be hard this year, the goddess of storms hunts," there was gravel to her voice as she spoke, "my stores are nowhere near as full as I would like. If I give you arrows will you hunt for me?" with the tap tap tap of her staff on the packed earth she found a chest and opened it, "I can offer shelter and food, I will share that which I have and give it freely."

He did not take the arrows, tipped with good steel, but brought her a brace of rabbits, fat at the start of winter, that first day, which she skinned with careful jerks of the wrists, a leather skirt draped over her thighs to protect her dress from splatters. She packed the meat, cut with careful motions, never so much as nicking her fingers, with her curved brass blade, into salt and washed her hands, scrubbing until the skin was raw but the tips of her fingers, were eternally stained black.

That first night they stayed in silence, as she sat at her workbench grinding dried herbs, neither introducing nor encouraging speech.

he second night, as she used a strange device to clean the fish he had caught, four large river trout, she started singing, low and almost to herself as she worked. She refused Derek's help and he got the impression she was helping him more than he was helping her. She sang low in her throat as she shook the fish scales out to the wind and Derek could have sworn that he saw small creatures of the forest- fox and rabbit and hare- come out to listen to her sing as she scattered what looked like stars in the poor light into the darkness.

She lit lamps for him, full of smoky tallow and fish oil, set near the isinglass windows to try and ease the smell of them and on the third night she poured him mead sharpened with blackberries and began to tell stories as if she knew that he could stay no longer.

The men with hard eyes were already chasing him. He did not want to lead them to her. She had been kind and did not deserve what they would do to her. They did not like people who were different.

"You are going north," she did not phrase it as a question but instead a statement. She knew these things and she was always right. "The gods linger in the quiet places," her tone was not much different from that of the old storyteller weeks before, "and they remember, they are not the bloodless Christian god, they demanded blood and were given it and there is power in that." He wondered if she was setting up a story or trying to warn him and he didn't know. "There are old places where the gods still hold sway. Be wary of the old places, villages given over to _Skadi_ , or Longhouses abandoned to the _sulten død_. They are not lost yet, those near them won't take the stone for their own houses and some still stand with plates on the tables from where the _draugr_ came for them."

She was silent for a moment before she stood and pulled out a jug from a shelf near the fire and poured two cups, handing one to him, "the old gods are cruel and hunger. They hold things valuable that the Christian god call sins, because they belong to the old gods, to _Skadi_ and _Freyja_ and the _All-father_ but the one who lingers longest, whose name is spoken of most is _Loki Firebringer_ for he is the father of _Fenrisulfr_ who will swallow the sun and bring about _Fimbulwinter_ which starts the end of the world. When the winters come early and this hard and the _draugr_ walk abroad hunting those who profaned their barrows it is _Fimbulwinter_ which is spoken of in quiet whispers, under breaths and in silent places in the hopes that the gods, both new and old, cannot hear." The cup she had handed him contained a spirit, raw and strong and flavoured with cloves which burned like perfumed fire sliding down his throat and lingered like an ember in his belly.

"There is one more thing I need of you," she drained her cup and set it on the table, before reaching up to remove the antlers from her hair, then one by one the spikes which held it in place, pins almost as thick as those in a church door, which caused her hair, white as wood ash, to fall loose about her shoulders and down her back like an avalanche. She did not remove the braid which crossed her forehead and was woven into her hair, but fussed instead with the brooches at the shoulders of her apron dress, letting it fall to the floor around her. The laces at the front of her kirtle went next and when it slid from her shoulders the shift went too until she was naked in front of him, pale as snow and covered in tattoos.

Her arms were covered in wild animals, stylised with thick rounded bodies and narrow pointed legs, the horns of goats, twisted and marked in thick blue lines were woven through fronds of herbs and other things Derek could not name.

The animals covered both arms and one leg to the knee as if the work had not been finished, but a wolf, made of woven bands curled around one breast as if in consuming the nipple it would swallow the sun. Derek did not doubt the ink work, which included lines of tight angular script, represented something but he did not back away from it.

"I," Derek started and she smiled under her veil of yarn strands, her lips stained by blackberry mead and clove liquor.

"I know what you are," she said, "you would have been welcomed here, prized as a warrior for the old gods, given strength and protection," she pressed forefinger and forefinger together and held her hands over her stomach where she had no markings, not even lines of prayers or spells. "You do not have to," she said, "but I know what it is I ask for."

He felt seen in a way that made him uncomfortable, that this blind woman could see him in a way that made him feel naked, stripped of both wool and skin and see him as he truly was, could see the reason the hard-eyed Christian men pursued him and found it beautiful.

"I shall call you by your name," she said and it had the cadence of a spell, like one of the low songs she sang to the wild things of the forest, " _vargr_ , blessed of _Loki Firebringer;_ children of _Hrodvitnir_ who is also called _Fenrisulfr_ who will swallow the sun and devour the _Allfather_. Cursed by sun and moon and sky but blessed with bravery and strength I choose you and ask this of you, for it must be a gift freely given."

The liquor was strong, like fire in his belly, and his limbs felt leaden and heavy as she walked towards him, feet, soles as black as the tips of her fingers, bare on the cold hard dirt of the floor and there must have been herbs cast into the fire for the very air smelled sweet. He lay back on the moss bed heaped high with furs which she had given him the use of and agreed to the pale moons of her breasts and her heavy thighs and fingers stained like they were dipped in black ink. Once when he looked up at where she reared above him like a crashing wave she wore the white wolf skin so the head fell over her own and the empty legs fell over her breasts and the hard stick lines of her tattoos swirled around her navel like a coriolis. She was a conflagration inside, a wildfire sweeping over him, a tempest crashing into him, and an avalanche smothering him in snow.

Derek woke the next morning to the cold, seeping into his bones like damp. He lay on the ground, tucked into the corner of an abandoned house. The walls had been torn down by fire long ago and covered in moss with other plants grown wild forcing their way into chinks in the construction to stand tall and face the sun. The garden outside was long untended and the meat in the chimney was gone.

It was like the witch had never been here- like it was all a dream he could not explain but he felt languorous, sated, content and full in a way he had not in a long time. Had she asked him he might have stayed but she had been sure he would go north. She warned him. She told him of the abandoned Longhouse that he should avoid, and she had repeated the warning of the _draugr_ , but she had known herbs and liquor, that she could lead him away from her house to this abandoned one should not have been a surprise. 

She had named him _Vargr_ but it wasn't the name he knew for himself, which was _Faoladh_. In Aberdeen his family had been known for their kindness, for the quiet selfless way in which they shared what they had for that was what he knew of his kind in Aberdeen. In _Noregsveldet_ the legends were different.

If the witch was to be believed they had been honoured, warrior priests in their endless wars to appease their blood drunk gods. She had known him, and she had named him, _Vargr_ , and it left him with fear lingering in his belly along with the good food she had given him.  
  
He shook himself off, checked his knapsack, which he found full of smoked fish, pulled on his mittens and checking his direction with the moss on the trees he continued north.


	2. Chapter 2

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone..” 

**Susan Hill** \- _the Haunting of Hill House_  


Derek couldn't remember how many days he had walked. He found himself a long straight stick and using it to help support his weight because he felt like the ice was forming long thin fingers on his back and shoulders making him heavier, even as the cold reached up through his boots and wool stockings to turn his feet to lead.

His head felt thick and like there was crystals forming in his nose as the snow started to pile up. 

He needed the stick to pull himself forward, using it to leverage his weight forward and trying not to look at every large rock and wondering if he should rest there, and if he did would he die? Would he succumb to the creeping cold and dark that made him so heavy and tired. His ears burned like they were on fire even under his hat and his face felt like it had been slapped.

He measured time by having to eat, and bending down to the freezing river, with chunks of ice swirling and sliding and oozing down the moving water, cutting into his hands as he pushed his water skin into the flow, blowing heat into his hands before he shoved them back into the mitts that the old story teller had given him, over the wool gauntlets his mother had made him that were all that he had left of her.

The snow under his feet made it feel like he carried the whole of his family on his back and that if he stumbled, if he slowed or stopped or rested against one of those large blocks of hard stone that the snow would bury him and he would be among them. 

He was so tired.

Tired physically forcing his way through the ankle deep snow.

Tired emotionally.

In his dreams he heard them laughing and he could not say they were not laughing at him.

He wondered if he was running from the hard eyed men with their fire or the sound of them laughing. 

He woke disorientated, cold and afraid, stumbling to his feet, hand still clutching his stave and lurching into the snow. He ate when he was hungry, drank when he was thirsty, keeping his waterskin as tight to his flesh as he could to help prevent it freezing, and tried to ignore the burn of the ice in his throat, cooling him from the inside.

Like this he couldn't build a fire. When he tried and the wood caught the crackle of wood falling into the heart of the flame drove him out into the snow emptying his stomach.

He couldn't.

He needed the fire to survive but he couldn't bear the sound of it, because the collapse of wooden supports into the fire had been what stopped the screaming before the hard eyed men had laughed, talking about roasting vegetables in the ashes whilst men from the village held Derek back, with a cloth over his mouth to stop him from screaming out. 

He had been much smaller then, searching for rabbits in the dark woods near his home, to bring back. Cora had wanted a squirrel fur collar. She had pestered her mother to it until Laura had finally given in and asked Derek if he could find one when he hunted, so he had told his mother he was going out looking for rabbits. They had sold the furs in town, but had a small garden and his uncle, Peter, worked for the lord in his scriptorium and had told Derek about history and art and things Derek had never seen. Laura preferred hunting but the townsfolk had thought it strange, so she kept to the kitchen gardens and weaving wool from their few sheep into fabric that clothed her family. 

Derek had wondered if he could help Peter at the scriptorium, the act of copying involved reading and he had a hunger for knowledge. He wandered the town, asking questions, amusing the vendors as he sold them fish pulled from the pond by their house, packed in straw to keep it fresh.

He had heard of the split in the church, but didn't see how it could matter so far away from the heart of the world, where Avignon and Rome might as well have been on the moon, but it had mattered and Derek had been in the forest when the fire came, when the men with their hard eyes and emblazoned crosses, woven from wool that could have been made by his sisters, burned the house to the ground with his family inside it.

The snow can't bring them back, can't bring him to them, but it lied so sweetly.

As it grew dark he could remember the lulling voice of his mother warning him of his nature when the moon was fat, how she was slender tall with fingers like needles slipping under his skin into his bones like molten silver.

How ironic that was the name the hard eyed men took for their own.

Silver fire burning through his bones until they cracked, until they forced him to his knees with a roar that should shake the very moon from the sky. He contorted, screaming, with unholy ichor shaking the muscles until the bones broke, fused differently into obscene shapes that put unnatural strain on his clothes and turned the silver to gold in his veins so he had to run, even though he was so hot the ice felt like fire on his skin and he had to roar, jaw cracking like spring celery between his teeth and loud like collapsing timbers. 

Above him the moon was fat. She wore a shawl of frost and silver and Derek was utterly in her thrall.

_ Beware, my love, when the moon is fat, she walks among us, spindle limbed and sharp of tongue, forging silver into your veins to remake us, for the moonlight, though sweet, has teeth, my love, and sharpened ones at that. _

  
  


He awoke to a mouth sweet with blood. Sat in the snow he cried into the rabbit skin mitts for the moon, for his family, for the snow, for the journey he had taken, but he had no tears left for himself.

He brushed the snow from his pants, pulled up his staff and began to walk, swallowing down bile and going back to the monotony of each step and the need to go North, to go to the dark place he had heard tell of, where the sunlight never reached and the hunters must stop. 

The story had filtered as far south as Aberdeen, of a city beneath the snow to the far north, where the sun never reached, at the very furthest reaches of the world - perhaps there he could be safe. So he continued, step by step by step, dragging his feet through the snow which reached to mid shin, leaning on the staff and pulling himself onward, trying to find his way back to the river so he had a frame of reference, but instead there were just the brushing fingers of pine against his cloak, tugging it back, heavy clumps of snow falling and sounding like footsteps causing him to turn, and his face burned, feeling like it was grazed and his eyes hurt from the light, but he continued, step after step after step after step.

The storm came out of nowhere. For a few minutes the wind was crueller, harder, pushing him forward and causing the tree tops to whip around like lashes, forcing snow from their branches so it sounded like running men behind him. A few flurries of snow danced around his face and then the world went grey. The wind sharp as knives. His skin felt raw, abraded, and he felt the skin of his cheek split under it, abandoning his staff to tuck his hands into his armpits and bowing his head as much as he was able, step after step after step.

The wind screamed.

The snow was like razor blades.

The world was grey.

He was wet and heavy and the sweetness of the cold was lost in this rage, a rage he could understand and felt like part of him and he was caught in a moment of indecision. He could lie down. He could give himself to the snow and the storm and the wind and the ice.

He was so cold that he was warming up again.

It was only anger that kept him from lying down and going to sleep.

His mind found the witch in the cottage by the river, scaling fish and talking about the old gods, of the _Allfather_ and his twin ravens, of _Thor_ the Thunderer who rode across the sky with his mighty hammer, of _Loki Firebringer_ who tricked the great wolves _Skol_ and _Hati_ to chase the moon and the sun across the sky to steal from a giant, and of _Skadi_ , goddess of storm and snow.

She had not earned his death.

He had come so far, from Aberdeen to sodden Amsterdam built around its central canal with stinking ships bobbing in the harbour as merchants hollered in every language of the known world and the ladies walked with wooden blocks tied to their leather shoes to keep their hems from the muddy pavements and woolen partlets to keep them warm in the cool damp.

From Amsterdam he walked North, through Utrecht and Saxony. He avoided Denmark with its boggy fields at the advice of an old drunk and continued along the coast of Saxy to Prussia before reaching Riga and moving towards Novgorod where he could continue North. He caught a ship at Riga which brought across the Baltic to Gotaland where he followed the coast north to Oslo and from there he just walked north.

He was heart sore and exhausted. He had walked and travelled and he would not give the old gods of the mountains the satisfaction of his death when he had been travelling so far and was so close to his goal.

Had he been able to find the air in the wailing storm he would have cursed her and all of her pantheon but it was all he could do to continue walking, hunched over and step by exhausting step by heavy step.

Her name was in his mouth, on his lips and burning his tongue when he saw it, a flash of something, like a spinning coin by firelight; a flicker of a falling star.

He was so sleepy. He could no longer feel the cold. All there could be was the wall of white, like a flensing fog, and the name of the old god like a curse and the flash of gold - so he walked towards it. He had lost so much - the gods could take nothing more from him.

It was not a cave, for a cave would have more substance, merely a rock overhang deep enough to keep most of the snow out, with the front covered by thick gorse with black thorns deep with drifts, and a small opening where a heavy pine branch, complete with needles had been hung as a curtain to keep the worst of the weather from the alcove. A fire had been set within, a heavy stone slab, the sort that would take two men to lift but only as large as Derek's torso covered in that strange stick script of the old gods in a ring with strange dark stains all over, protected the fire from the gorse and dried needles of spruce and pine made a thick carpet. 

Gratefully Derek fell inside, skin screaming against the heat and tugging off his wet cloak and boots to massage feeling back into his feet.

It was a small space, lit by the fire, warm and dry and curled around the flame, the heat of which spread out to fill the space, insulated by snow and the hanging branch, he felt secure for the first time since he had left the witch's house. He dried his stockings out on a branch by the fire, curling his toes and watching the hard red splits heal and form healthy skin and outside the wind whipped and howled and screamed and clumps of snow falling from branches sounding like running feet outside. 

When he slept he dreamt of the _draugr_ , with long thin limbs given to hunger, hair turned white and teeth like a henge, with tall slabs of stone reaching up and falling so they stood at odd angles. It had eyes that blazed in the storm, like gold coins caught in firelight and a howl like a shriek almost too high for people to hear,like a creaking hinge. It had fingers like thorns, black like the wood of gorse, on skin like parchment and bone white hairs, sinewy muscles stretching and pulling on elongated bones. He curled in on himself and shivered despite the warmth, his belly empty and sitting inside him like a stone.

The storm lasted three days, during which time Derek pruned the gorse for wood for the small fire. He dried his clothes, one at a time and found a small cache buried at the lowest part of the overhang with dried strips of meat, gamey and tough, a skin of water, syrupy with ice and most precious of all, a pair of thick wool stockings, with lacings at the top to fix them over his thighs. He pulled them on over his own and then laced his boots over the top, an extra protection against the deep and drifting snow. He boiled fresh water to replace what he used and replaced the skin into the cache, and that first day after the storm he hunted, finding only a few ptarmigan, losing their autumn fat, but plucked and left to dry over the fire after he decided to stay one more night, exhausted and knowing that he had to return to the cold and the ice, for the alcove was barely tall enough for him to sit, but desperate for the comfort of something so simple as a place away from the snow.

Derek couldn't find his way back to the river. He set out in a single direction and walked.

In his mind he remembered his uncle, Peter, taking him into the woods and carving four letters into four trees to show him the cardinal points and faced him to North teaching him how to find his way. _"If you remember how you stand now, how you face, the weight of your body you will remember the trees and you will always find North._ " 

Derek's mother had scoffed at him. Peter found all of his learning in books. What use had she for books, she said, as she took him back into the woods, showing him where the moss grew, away from the sun, how that was always south, the brightest star in the sky that would always point North, how the sun rose in the east and set in the west and how with just a little knowledge he could find his way home no matter how lost he was.

Laura had said that he had no need of these things, what need did a weaver have for travel, when their entire world was in their loom. 

At night, by flickering firelight and with the warmth of wine in his belly Peter would tell them stories. He told them of the lands of the south where the earth was scorched black by the sun and men walked about with their heads in their hands and others that swam like fish, unable to step on land. He told tales of the far north where the sun never fell, for it only landed on the world in a stripe from East to West before it went under the world to start again the next morning. He said there were old gods, the gods of Rome and Greece, who believed the sun went under the world each night to fight demons to stop them coming to the waking world.

He had such stories to tell.

The snow was reaching Derek's knees now, hard to trudge through and was drifted against the trees, endless spruce and pine that seemed to be tall spikes raging against a sky the colour of parchment. With the new stockings Derek's feet felt, if not warm, no longer like lead at the end of his legs. He wondered if people lived this far north, if they walked in such deep snows or did they cut roads into the snow, knowing they'd be refilled with the next flurry, or was there a mechanism he did not know which made it easy.

As he took step by laborious step by laborious step by laborious step through the trees, their needles brushing against the bare skin of his cheeks like the caressing fingers of lovers long gone, he repeated to himself the stories Peter had told him. The stories of the people of the far north who had feet the size of dinner plates and walked with a strange circular gate like there was a wheel between their knees that made a quarter turn with each step.

Derek felt like he understood that, because he was using that silly walk now and could hear Cora's laughter on the wind.

He stopped.

Was he hearing things or remembering?

He couldn't tell the difference.

The old man had said to beware the sound of children in the forest but he couldn't remember why. 

He started walking again.

If he stopped the men with the hard eyes would find him. 

He entertained the fantasy of the men with the hard eyes and their coarse clothes emblazoned with a white cross, hart bounded with a star and a fleur de lys, hearing the children in the wood and following them to whatever it was that the old man had warned him of. Would they then decide to hunt the children's voices and leave him alone?

It was a pretty dream before he admitted to himself what he had known all along: they would not stop until he was dead.

  
  


The storm gave more warning the second time, the wind picking up over a few hours which gave Derek a chance to try and find shelter but there was none to be found, not even a wayward pine, hollowed out by lightning or sickness where he could huddle inside. So he continued to walk. He didn't have much choice. Amongst the trees the snow was only knee deep so he stayed in the forest where the light was muted, softer, and the children laughed until the wind grew vicious.

Between the trees he saw a flash of light, a glimmer of gold and he moved towards it. He might have called out to it but he couldn't remember. If he did the wind stole his voice away.

The house was almost ruined, abandoned for at least a year judging by the branches growing through the window shutters and the disrepair of the walls. It could have been repaired with time and love but it had been a long time since it had seen any of the latter. It had been carved out of the forest earth, walls made of slim logs covered in mud and woven willow, open like scars to the snow which reached up three of the walls to the eaves.

Derek had to climb in through the window opening.

There was a bed, but the furs were rotten, a wooden stool with one of the three legs broken, a stone fireplace covered with the same leaf mess as the floor and a small ladder to the covered attic where straw had been packed between the rafters to allow them to dry fruit, rats and other wild life had long since made a full dinner of what had been there but the house was not unlike the one that Derek had shared with his family.

He cleared away the fireplace, smashed the broken stool for wood and built a fire before he began to truly search the building. The light had led him to shelter a second time and a second time it had left him there.

In an old chest, with leather hinges torn, perhaps by the sharp teeth of mice, he found a wool dress, one of the kind that the witch had worn and with a thank you on his lips to the woman who had lived there he tore it two down the side seams, opening the start of the stitching with his knife. One side he wrapped around his chest under his coat and his cloak to keep his chest warm, and the other he intended to wrap around his face and ears over his hat to prevent the way the wind sliced into the exposed skin. 

Skadi might have been determined and cruel but Derek would not lie down in her snows. He had come so far from the hard eyed men with the star and the _fleur de lys_ on their clothes, from the hot lands of France, he would not give an old god the satisfaction of his death.

With daylight left as the storm raged outside Derek climbed the ladder to the small attic and there was a figure there, some sort of idol to the old gods.

He had seen such idols before. They were usually small things, easily carried tucked into a belt or a pocket, carved from bone or horn, or the sharp teeth of seabeasts. Most were of _Odin Allfather,_ with one eye covered and wearing battle armour and holding a spear, tight to his side. It was not uncommon for men to wear beads of bone shaped like a hammer though their families might not remember the worship of _Thor the Thunderer_. 

Derek did not recognise this goddess.

He could not have said how it was that she had been created but it looked like she had been a woman, with half of her flesh preserved in tar, skin like leather, shiny and black, and the other half bone held together with thin strings. She wore gold earrings and a wig of sheepskin from which several pairs of antlers emerged to form a halo behind her. Golden chains decorated her throat, and a sword, rotted to almost nothing, was draped across her skirts. Beads of glass, amber and alabaster had been tied on strings and had been placed in her skirts as offering.

He did not notice the pools of black across the split limb floor and sprays against the wooden walls as he climbed down. He did not see the rents in the wood as if great claws had been dragged across it.

Derek left her to her loft and went back to the fire.

He slept there, curled on the floor beside the fire as it crackled and popped, stirring, and dreamt of a slim figure as pale as the moon who reached down and cupped his face with a hand as cold as snow. He dreamt that the figure snapped together his teeth, and they were a wolf's teeth, many and sharp as glass, and he pulled his face away baring his throat, not through submission but through a refusal to bite down.


	3. Chapter 3

“No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice”

**Susan Hill** \- _the Haunting of Hill House_

  
The storms were getting more frequent. Weeks, perhaps, had separated the first two, then, almost two days after the second the third hit like a cipin on a bodhran, with quick rhythmic percussion that should have split the sky with thunder so great was its force.

It turned the world a dull grey, like a fog with snow so fierce that even if he dared to take his hands from his armpits he would not have seen them in front of his face. The things he had taken from the house, the dress he had ripped in two and the broken planks he had used to support his bag on his back instead of slung from his shoulder so he could carry more, had become invaluable. The dress protected his face and shaded his eyes and the pack protected his back and helped keep his chest warm, freeing his hands and allowing him to stow the sticks that made it easier to cross the deep snow.

He knew he needed to find somewhere to wait out the winter and hoped that he would find a village or steading soon, where he could offer work and his strength in exchange for shelter, even if it meant sleeping in the barn with the livestock. He could hide his nature; run from the hard-eyed men and the fat silver moon; he could duck his eyes and say yessir when he should say no so that the snow could pass.

Since the snow started a day before he had been following the golden glint in the grey. It was like a coin reflecting firelight, just a tiny gold light in the overwhelming blanket of grey. 

A snow fly flickering in the distance: but he couldn't remember the story. It had been one of Peter's- of that he was sure. There was a reason for the snow flies but the story was gone, wiped away by distance and snow. 

He thought he heard Peter's voice in the west.

His mother's voice in the twilight.

The thud thud thud of Laura's heddle at the loom.

The raspy purr of Cora snoring, rustling in her furs in the bed in the attic of their small croft.

The snow seduced so sweetly and offered such peace in its embrace.

The sap freezing in the pines gave off loud retorts as it shattered the wood around it in little explosions, like a dropped heddle on a stone floor,

He was as jumpy as a new puppy fighting sleep, snarling at moving shadows.

He imagined that he was dreaming when the trees were suddenly gone and the mountain was there, huge and black and looming over him, not shielding him from the driving snow but thinning it enough that he could see the cliffs and falls and rocks that would prevent climbing. 

Only the day before he could have sworn there was no mountain. The foothills had been so subtle and the snow so deep.

The people who had lived in these places, the ones that worshipped the old gods, had built their palaces squat and long, with great doors that opened wide enough that a carriage could drive inside. It had been built from logs as long as ships and turf that was now covered in snow. 

Like the English castles- they were built in squares around a central hall. The houses were gone, covered by snow and worn away by time, but the hall stood, raised above the others and built into the very stone of the mountain. The doors at the front were blocked by the snow, driving up into drifts that must have been as tall as Derek himself, but there was smoke coming from the chimney and through the window, the shutter opened and held by a latch, he could see a warm golden light and even with the snow, with flakes like the tip of a lash against his skin, Derek could taste the warm foetid stink of sheep.

He almost fell forward into the snow. 

Here was shelter and warmth and company.

A shepherd had moved in for the winter, caught, like Derek had been, by the early snows, and even if all he could stay was until the storm had passed it was shelter and another person to speak to.

The light, gold and warm and seductive as the snow poured out of an open door, "come in," the young man in the doorway said, "quickly, before all the heat gets out."

He was illuminated in the golden light, like an angel in one of Peter's manuscripts, the ones he painted in the scriptorium in Aberdeen, haloed by the warmth of the inside, slim and dark-haired, every little thing that Derek wanted made flesh; shelter and heat and light and away from the snow and the moon and the hard-eyed men who had chased him so long.

Derek was so tired that it seemed to take so very long to take the three yards to the door and then was bundled inside by the young man's hand on his back and the heat was so different that his skin felt like he had been dipped in molten fire.

The hall had been built around a central walkway with firepits, now empty, and a raised dais with a wooden rail like in a church, although it was mostly broken. The back of the dais was the coarse uneven stone of the mountain but to the left, dominating the wall was a set out double iron doors, carved and glorious, but with three heavy bars across them, that extended a yard or more past the door frame on either side.

Two braziers sat on the dais, lit with golden embers and shining through the metal grilles, there were chairs there and the right half of the hall below the dais was sheep, walked down from the mountain for the winter, the shaggy long-legged mountain sheep of this place, their fleece thick and soft and their heat suffused the longhouse like their stink, the other half, sectioned off by broken furniture, was threshed grass stacked high and left to dry that they might eat. A staircase was tucked away behind a rotten curtain on the right side of the dais and led to a walkway and some hidden upper rooms, where the jarl had kept his private rooms and lived amongst his family, which meant that behind the curtain were other rooms, what had been storage and the kitchens for the great hall.

In its time it must have been magnificent but time had eroded most of that long before the boy had brought his sheep to winter here.

The boy sat cross-legged on old carpets, piled into cushions, wearing a wool sweater that crossed his shoulders with a diagonal stripe down over his chest, the stitches thick as his fingers, and thick wool pants. His boots seemed strangely light for the heavy winter, and he had dried mutton on a spit, sizzling and dripping, over the brazier and that added to the stink. His skin was not burned by the wind and his skin looked soft as a Spanish peach, with a mouth like a slice of fruit, but his eyes were like gold coins reflecting firelight, black hair cut short as a spring sheep. He was freshly shaved and his skin looked like warmed cream dusted with spices.

He was beautiful and Derek knew that beautiful things were dangerous.

"I'm Stiles," the boy said in a voice deeper than Derek would have thought, "well met and well come to Borgkommen." He spread his hands in a gesture meant to encompass the entire bailey, even the ruined outbuildings, "sorry we couldn't meet in more clement weather." With his entire body, he gestured to a pile of rugs. "Come in, sit down, relax, converse," there was laughter in his golden coin eyes and in the corners of his slice of fruit mouth, "the house doesn't always look like this, sometimes it's even worse," and then he laughed and it sounded like the water in the burn by the house in Aberdeen and Derek's resistance, hard-worn and fought for fiercely, gave way like it was as insubstantial as cobwebs.

  
  


Stiles seemed to have the energy of a hundred people, trapped in one place. He couldn't sit still. His hands danced in front of his face when he talked and he never shut up. His eyes tracked every shadow, not with terror or panic, but with the innocent curiosity of a child. As soon as he realised Derek was wet, from the snow, he ran up the stairs, hidden behind a pillar, to the upper floor hidden in the rafters along one side of the longhouse, and came down with scraps of linen and fresh clothes, a clean linen shirt worn to a softness, not unlike silk, wool pants like his own that tied at the hips, and a heavy knit jopula, made of the same looping stitches that Stiles himself wore that would come to Derek's knees, and fresh bright red wool stockings.

When Derek pulled off his jerkin Stiles told him to wait by the fire and eat, hang on, he would only be a moment, and fetched a pair of large leather buckets and went to the door, using a wooden ladle to shovel in the snow until they were both heaped high and dragged them back to the firepit. A cast-iron cauldron, large enough to feed such a house, had been hung over the pit and singing to himself as he sparked a small fire and set the snow to melt. _"Summer has come in, Sing loudly, cuckoo! Seed grows and meadows bloom, and the wood springs forth anew. Sing, cuckoo! The ewe bleats after the lamb, the cow lows after the calf, the bull leaps, the buck farts, and merry sing, cuckoo."_

It took a moment for Derek to realise he was boiling water for him to wash, taking a small cake of soap from a leather box hanging from his waist. It was almost enough to make Derek cry.

"I know," Stiles said as he stirred the melting snow to help it soften quicker, "you're going to end up stinking of sheep either way but I don't know about you, but sometimes," this was said with a lick of the lips, "I just really enjoy being clean." He had a quicksilver smile, soft and liquid, and there was a hint of adult maturity in him but he couldn't have been older than nineteen, still coming into his man's growth. 

"I have some food," he said standing up and brushing down his knees, "for the sheep in one of the sheds, I'll just go get that," there was a three-quarter cloak hanging from a peg which he pulled around himself leaving one arm bare, "so you can wash up. I'll probably be about an hour." His joy was infectious, spreading like a wildfire until Derek felt it despite the exhaustion and the cold in his bones.

It was a luxury that Derek had not expected, hot water and a cake of soap studded with lavender, and privacy to wash. He had expected shelter, and perhaps a place to lay a fire. He had not hoped for company, even that of the sheep which was trying to eat his hair by reaching over the rail as he added wood to the fire, and he was being treated like a king.

The boy, Stiles, did not know what Derek was. He could not know. He could never know. Derek had been so lonely. If he could stay a night; two nights. If he could share a single conversation. His voice was raspy from disuse and he could not remember if he had even given his name to this young man who had opened his shelter to him, who offered him food and clothes and a small cake of soap that smelled of hot summer days far to the south, the summer that the boy had sung of.

Derek could barely wait until the water was warm. He stripped to the skin, the warmth of the sheep and the fire and the brazier on the dais being almost enough that he was little more than chilled despite the terrible storm outside, the one that the boy had gone into without question, he stood naked and took the linen rag, slopping the water over himself and unto the floor, rubbing it into the soap and then into the creases of himself, the bend of knee and armpit, the creases of thigh and groin, and even the illicit delicious feel of a soaped movement on his cock when he had only had it in hand for pissing.

He was too tired to even harden. There was a weariness in his bones that made them feel like they were made of stone. His muscles felt loopy and loose, like the slashed strings on Laura's loom when they smashed it. He slopped the warm water over the back of his neck and wondered when he had started crying.

For long minutes he squatted beside the fire, naked and exposed and gave off roaring great sobs that racked his body with tremors and he could not help the sound he made, causing the sheep to stamp where they were stalled, uncomfortable by the commotion, but one, heavy with lamb, butted her head forward and began to nuzzle at his hair like he was her lamb to whom she was giving succour. Her kindness just seemed to make it sharper. He cupped his head in his hands and let her try to aid him until all the tears were gone, when he wiped his face with the soapy rag, washed his hair and sluiced himself off with the ladle and drying off pulled on the fresh clothes laid out for him.

He lifted the cauldron, glancing around to see that Stiles was not present, and poured the water inside into the trough for the sheep, he had been careful to keep it as soap-free as he could so that it would not go to waste, and lowered his head, murmuring to the sheep that had tried to mother him, calling her a good girl and did not think to wonder why she had not baulked at the scent of a predator and scratched her behind the ear. 

The sheep in Aberdeen had skittered away from him, prancing over to the other side of the hills pretending to be nonplussed by clearly uncomfortable and the rams would bleat at him with threat, even when he was a child. There had been a time when he had enjoyed it, going over the hills with his mother collecting the lumps of fleece caught in fences and on gorse bushes, stuffing them into canvas bags so that they could be washed and spun later. They had stayed out until they each had a bag so stuffed it could not close and when they went home, after their supper, he and his baby sister would be shuffled into bed whilst his mother walked the fleece and his sister would spin with a _dealgan_ and Peter, returned from the scriptorium, would play the _bodhran_ and his mother and Laura would sing as they worked.

Stiles made a large meal over the brazier, using the cauldron only to boil water which he carried in leather tankards to his cook pots. It said so much about the scale of this place that the braziers could hold four pots and still leave embers bare.

He sat cross-legged on a combed fleece stirring pots and pans and singing to himself whilst alternately trying to catch Derek in conversation. He talked openly and freely but never about himself. He taught Derek all the names and histories of his sheep. He talked about the old gods, he talked about the lentils he cooked with water and mutton broth that he kept in a corked jug, he talked about the peas he had soaking for the next day - and it had been months since Derek had even seen pease pudding - and the mutton frying in the pan. He talked about the snow and how long the nights were and how hard it was to learn to play the pipe when there was no one to teach you but time.

When Derek asked him about the lentils that he was making into mash he smiled and it was like the sun breaking over the mountains. He smiled with his entire being and when he laughed it was with a full-body movement as if the joy was too great for his frame. He experienced everything quickly and as brightly as a fire.

He seemed to give all of himself and truly gave nothing.

Derek understood that and didn't press. If Stiles wanted to talk about himself he would, Derek did not need to push him. He didn't want to give anything of himself either. The conversation was nice though, even if Derek didn't talk much, he had been alone for weeks since the witch's house and had expected no true human companionship over the winter. Instead, he got Stiles.

Stiles - who shared with him because he had those things to share: his fire, his conversation, his food, his shelter and the kindness of warm water and clean clothes.

What did it matter if he talked too much? or sometimes stopped,- like a scent had caught his attention- before he returned to what he was saying as if there had never been a break, who licked his lips so often that he might wear them raw. He had long lashes that seemed to linger on his warmed cream cheek when he blinked and his eyes were the colour of _uskebeaghe_ , like a taste of home. He had a hundred jitters and tics and Derek catalogued all of them, pressing them into his memory like flowers between the pages of a book.

He plated up the food talking all the while, long monologues about nothing, not caring if Derek agreed but happy to be listened to by something other than his ovine companions, although he talked to them as much. He laughed as he spiced the food saying how he loved cinnamon and would put it in everything if he could, but he only had nutmeg and mace. After supper, spiced and flavoured with dried onion ground to powder and wild garlic leaves, and served with a dried peppermint tisane in wooden cups, he pulled out his spindle, so different from Laura's dealgan and perched on what remained on the table he made it cavort and dance in his hands as he created thread.

Spinning could be safely done by firelight as the threads twist and thickness were measured by the fingertips and Stiles had a man's hand with long slender fingers. He was a boy, nineteen perhaps, but on the cusp of true manhood, and Derek found him beautiful. He was slim, still softened by baby fat and wearing a madder red sweater of thick stitches that only covered one side of his chest and brown wool pants.

"Do you worry about eating the sheep?" Derek asked him, "you are so close to them."

"It is an honour to eat them," Stiles corrected, "to take them into yourself, to give them worth beyond death, the meat of them becoming you as your body takes from it what it needs, becoming muscle and blood and bone, you are rebuilt from their strength and love, it is intimate."

Derek was silent after that, even when Stiles changed the conversation. Stiles talked with his hands, saying everything but nothing at all.

Derek believed the men with the hard eyes would burn him for this as surely.

He saw Derek, leaning against what had once been the throne but was now nothing more than a block of wood with the edges sanded flat, how Derek's eyes tracked him and beyond him the heavy iron door that led into the mountain.

In the firelight, it was possible to see the details that covered it, how a great metal tree had been cast and was formed only when the door was closed, with nine circular insets where the stick writing was carved. The wood that held it closed seemed to be entire yew trees, hardened and held in place by spikes into the very stone of the walls.

"It leads to a tomb," Stiles said without seeming to raise his eyes from the spinning spindle and thread in his hands. "There's no reason to open it," he continued, "people in this country don't mess with the sulten død, even if we're squatting in what used to be their home."

"I was warned of a _draugr,"_ Derek was sleepy, his hands folded in his lap and a yawn sliding up his throat but not expressed yet.

"Did you rob a tomb?" Stiles asked with a smile, watching Derek with a fondness that was strange for a few hours knowledge of the other. _"Draugr_ are singleminded, if one comes after you you'll not need a warning, you'll know." His grin was suddenly too full of teeth. "They will rip and tear until they are done and then they shall gobble you up." He snapped his teeth shut. "They bring the winter, one is probably hunting for _Skadi_ to be so fierce," it started like the opening of a story. He pronounced the name _Skathi_.

"She is a _Jotun,"_ Stiles continued, "and lives in the top of the mountains where it is quiet, she hunts with her bows on her skis and brings the snow to drive out the Aesir," He lifted another bale of roving onto his shoulder before he continued, "they brought her and her father _Thjazi_ from _Jotunheim_ to steal the apples of _Idunn,_ bites of which would make the _Aesir_ immortal, but they tricked _Skathi,_ they saw that she was a fine hunter and they turned her father into the form of a hawk for the theft. They goaded her that she was a weak hunter, that her boast that she could hit anything with her bow was false, and challenged her to shoot a hawk from the sky."

Derek gasped, seeing the way it had played out. " _Skathi_ was angry and she brought the winter, turning the very world to ice in her rage, until _One_ -Eye took the eyes of her father, which he had stolen as a prize to his cleverness, and put them in the sky where they shone brightest at winter."

"You don't call them gods," Derek said.

"They are the _Aesir_ , or they are _Jotun_ or _Vanir,_ they are not gods," he stopped, "this was where the _Aesir_ waged war, it drove up the mountains and flooded the plains, the winters here are harsh and the summers full of bugs because of them, because the _Aesir_ hungered and others had powers that they did not, so they took them by war or by theft or by trickery." He put down his spinning and went to the door, pointing out the nine worlds and who lived there, and on _Niflheim_ ,” he lingered a moment, "this is where the _Aesir_ placed _Hel_ and she created a kingdom for the earnest dead, those who were good but did not die in battle as the _Aesir_ demanded, and this is where tombs and barrows are closest to." He stopped a moment, and licked his lips, "it is where my mother is." Then he went to continue and stopped.

"It is late," he said, "tomorrow will be another short day," he stopped, "if the weather permits we might be able to take the sledge to the village, it would be late when we return, and we cannot leave the sheep overnight, they eat more than you can imagine, but you don't have to stay here with me."

Derek wanted nothing more.

"I converted the room upstairs for drafts," he said and offered his hand, "it's much nicer to sleep in, and you don't have to worry about sheep eating your hair in the night."

"Not _Draugr_?" Derek said getting up.

"Drafts," Stiles conceded, "but until the sheep learn to climb stairs we are safe enough unless you did rob a tomb."

Derek assured him that he had not.

The stairs creaked as they ascended but they were strong, yew like the bars over the tomb door and they flexed with the footfalls, the wood didn't blacken the way oak or pine did when exposed to years of neglect, but still golden and red. Stiles going before him with a bundle of reeds lit to bring the flame with them.

Stiles opened the door to what had been the jarl's chamber to reveal a large bedframe piled high with woollen blankets, old fleeces yet to be carded and furs on a straw mattress. The hangings from the hall had been brought up here and repurposed, nailed to the walls to protect from draughts to create a pocket of fabric in which he had put his bed and a much smaller brazier which Stiles lit casting licks of light against the wall which gave the impression of the room being a dark red fabric womb.

There was only one bed, and as Stiles peeled off his boots, Derek realised that Stiles fully intended that they share. 

He would burn. Derek thought. He would burn for what he was and for what he wanted.

But Stiles sat on the bed, pulling off his clothes to reveal his shirt which he intended to sleep in, offering the space to Derek without even a word.

What a lovely way to burn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles song is "Sumer is icumen in" an actual medieval lay


	4. Chapter 4

“All I could think of when I got a look at the place from the outside was what fun it would be to stand out there and watch it burn down.”

 **Shirley** **Jackson** , _The Haunting of Hill House_

  
  


The weeks rushed by in a flurry of storms and the wells of flesh that they made with their bodies. How quickly tremulous touches became confident, became kisses, became fierce rutting became Stiles rising above him like a breaking wave and the heat of his body an inferno in the cold room with its madder tapestries and wooden bed frame creaking against the floor.

On the floor below the sheep bleated out their displeasure at the noise of the whipping wind as it wuthered through the narrow places and skated across the snow above. They were animals little given to confinement and it made the hall hot and the stink of it was almost meaty on the tongue so when Derek could go outside the cold air and the emptiness of scent was like a slap. They were able to leave the longhouse a few times, Stiles had strung a rope to the outhouse, and another to the building where he stored the hay, but there was little exploration beyond that because the weather was not amenable.

There was even a day when Stiles hurried back to bed declaring that it was too cold to snow and the curve of his shoulder, pale as winter cream, distracted Derek enough that he did not ask further.

There was food, hot and filling, simple and mutton based but never so little that they went hungry, and sweetly spiced. There was conversation, witty and charming as they sat together working the yarn. Once Stiles had learned Derek was a weaver's son and could card yarn he gave him the paired brushes and grinned at him and Derek gave way as if he was made of butter. So Derek brushed it out so the fibres all ran parallel before Stiles spent the night spinning it. He opened a window and would sit in the pool of light that came in through the raised shutter and worked the thread with a bone needle and his thumb in an art he called _nalbinding_. 

As he did he told Derek stories, leaning against him, side by side in front of the brazier, telling him stories of the old gods, most specifically the Jotun which he claimed his mother had told him at her knee. He told about Ymir, a giant formed when the ice of Niffleheim met the fires of Muspelheim and how in the warm places of his flesh he created a son and a daughter who were nourished by a great cow who licked the stones into the shape of men one of which came to life and was the grandfather of Odin and his brothers. "He calls himself Allfather," Stiles had sneered, drinking from his tea in disgust, "because he wishes to change the story and be what men remember, but Ymir was first and Odin cut him down, to fashion the very soil and oceans from his corpse."

Derek had nuzzled his nose into the dark brown hair of Stiles and took a deep breath of him, how under the smoke from the brazier and the sheep stink he smelled he smelled of the cold wind across the snow and the sharp sting of freshly cut pine. 

When the weather was truly bad and the fires needed to be lit in the fire pit and not just the braziers then he would dye his thread, madder root for red, dried chamomile flowers for yellow, walnut shells for brown, and old urine to fix the colours, or with the red alum which he kept tightly sealed in a jar explaining that it was poison. He would hang the pots over the long firepit, which warmed the barn for the sheep, and then hung the yarn on the niddy noddies and lines strung over the empty place in the hall where the roof had collapsed and it was too small to let the sheep wander. It gave the longhouse a festival feel with strings of bright colour and the laughter of a young man talking to his sheep. 

He combed them daily, taking the fleece fibres that came away in the comb, and using them in his craft. He was always busy, his hands always doing something and Derek being there allowed him to do more and what time he had free, when he was not working with the sheep, or the yarn, or cooking from his endless stores, he gave over to pleasure, to learning the reactions of Derek's skin, the texture of his hair, the noises he made, and the smells of him and Derek was just as voracious.

In the aftermath when they lay cuddled together on the straw mattress pulling furs over them and twined like socks they talked. Careless intimacies, Stiles said how his grandparents had eloped and his mother had been born in Italy, far from the frozen north that was their home, and his father served the justice in Poland. Stiles said that he had come here to find the place where his grandparents were from and the sheep had needed keeping and it had taken more time than he had thought that it would.

"There is no animal as stupid as the sheep," Stiles said with a laugh, "I've seen a sheep so busy chewing it walked off a cliff, you can't ask anything of sheep," he rubbed at his favoured ewe's head, "because they really don't know what is best for them." But the sheep in Aberdeen had been scared of Derek. Stiles' flock did not seem to care.

Derek talked of Aberdeen and his sister, he talked of his mother and his uncle, and he talked of the hard-eyed men who had followed him so doggedly. He talked of the church and its divide. He talked about how men took that as an excuse to destroy that was different. He talked about the way that they had chased him.

He did not say why he was different, but let Stiles know that he was.

Stiles did not care. He called them bastards and threatened them with violence if they ever came near. He said that sheep were vicious, that he would use his sheep to hunt them down, but he didn't think that they would find him here. Derek told him that they had found him everywhere, tracking him like a hart through the forest, as if they had some way of knowing where he was no matter how careful he was.

Derek kissed him rather than continue the conversation.

Kissing Stiles was a wonder for a lot of reasons. It was finally accepting a part of himself that he had never thought would ever be accepted; that he had been told was unnatural and wrong. Men did not kiss other men with desire in their hearts. He would be cursed to Hell for it. 

" _Hel_ is not a place to fear in these lands," Stiles said with soft kisses and strokes of his hair, and he meant it and opened his body to distract Derek from the fear he had. He had quick fingers and a sharp tongue and a smile that lit him up from the inside like he was a creature of flame, though his feet were like blocks of ice.

Derek was sure that this bubble of happiness would not last. It could not. The hard-eyed men would always find him, and he could not ask Stiles to accompany him. Stiles had a life here.

He told Stiles about the story of the city where the sun never shone and Stiles told him about the Saami who lived in the very far north and how if anyone knew the way there it would be them. He clung to Derek with hard fingers and pulled him down into their bed.

More than anything Derek wanted to stay in this forgotten longhouse with the bleating sheep and the madder tapestries that brought close the walls of the room in which they slept.

It was a paradise, buried in by snow, with short bursts of sunlight and the wailing of the wind outside catching shutters and shingles from the roof and banging them against the house.

Yet sometimes Derek woke in the night troubled with terrible dreams. He dreamt of a creature, tall and thin, stalking through the snow, with terrible claws and teeth that stood at stark angles in a mouth that could do nothing but hunger. Its feet were so large and the toes, such as they were, splayed out so it could cross the snow without sinking in.

It was a demon. It could have been something out of the pages of one of uncle Peter's books. It sniffed the air like a dog and had eyes that burned like fire. When it roared even the mountains trembled in its wake.

Once, only once, but once was more than enough, Derek saw the creature eat in his dream, feasting on the wriggling leg of a man who still tried to pull away, pulling away the muscle in quivering wet lumps as blood splattered the woollen pants that the victim wore, one hand pinning the young man in place as he cried and sobbed with the pain before blissful unconsciousness.

There were other dreams.

There were beast dreams.

Dreams that got more vivid and frequent when the moon grew fatter.

There were the dreams of running with the wind, faster and the air sweet with pine and spruce and someone running with him, sometimes Stiles, sometimes not, sometimes he was other, running in the beast dream, with skin like snow and his eyes were different, the pupils slit like those of a cat with a dark line around the original iris to mark it as it darkened, but the white of his eye was solid black. He did not have human teeth but fangs sharp and uneven but made of what looked like glass, sharp and tearing; a mouth tore open from ear to ear. His fingers were blackened, like those of the witch all those weeks before but ended in sharp tips like the talons of an eagle. He was shirtless in those dreams and his skin was the colour of snow but his entire being was one of joy and freedom and the beast ran alongside him as wild and free as he was.

In the beast dreams he was monstrous and beautiful and the moon above was fat in an inky black sky.

And as the dreams grew more frequent, as the moon got fatter the slumbering beast under his skin twisted and turned demanding to be set free. He could feel it under his fingernails and behind his teeth most of all.

He was terrified Stiles would see it; see him as he truly was: a beast wearing the skin of a man and he would run and he would find the hard-eyed men and Derek would burn.

Stiles was growing more restless as the winter continued, licking his lips and gnawing on the skin around his thumbnail, he ate voraciously but always seemed to be hungry. He distracted himself from whatever plagued him by keeping himself busy, he spun or he worked the long flat needle of his nalbinding over the rough skin of his thumb, making hats and mittens and thick socks like the ones that Derek had found in the cache weeks before.

The weather kept them mostly inside, the snow was constant even if it was not always wicked and turned the world grey. It would take hours, Stiles said, to reach the village- and hours to return- if they had a day that promised clear they would go but the walls were closing in on both of them. The sheep didn't seem to care, even if they were starting to get skittish around them both.

"We need fresh meat," Derek said as the fat moon hovered under the world ready to rise, "I can hunt for us. The forest isn't far."

Stiles ran his hand down the length of his face, slow and intimate before he pressed their foreheads together, "hunt well," he said, "and may Skathi hurry your steps back to me."

Derek opened the door and went into the snow to break into a run and the moon crested and he let the silver consume him, he could hear his mother and her soft rhyme as the pain seared through him like liquid lead through his veins, his bones cracking and breaking as they were reshaping him into the beast.

The moon laid her shawl upon him until he was remade in her image and he lost himself to the snow and the hunt and the smell of game on the ice hard wind. It broke him and pulled at him, ripping and tearing until the transformation was done. It rolled his shoulders back to barrel out his chest, narrowed his hips and bent his knees back, stretching out hands and fingers as claws tore out his nails and the scream it wrenched from him sounded like the roar of a great beast, more human than animal.

_Beware, my love, when the moon is fat, she walks among us, spindle limbed and sharp of tongue, forging silver into your veins to remake us, for the moonlight, though sweet, has teeth, my love, and sharpened ones at that._

But he could also hear Stiles singing his sweet, strange song about the coming of summer.

Derek came back to himself with the rise of the sun in the east, and for once didn't retch with the pain and horror of what he had done. There was one of the local deer, tall and thick furred, dead at his feet, it's guts ripped out and flung away but the vital organs, heart, lungs, liver, kidneys were gone letting him know the beast had eaten them warm.

Sometimes he remembered being the beast, but mostly, ever since he had fled Aberdeen, it had a mind of its own and its own hungers. It had never taken down a prey animal this large before, and the deer, with its thick pelt and furred antlers, was almost as large as a horse, nothing at all like the sleek animals that he was used to.

He used clean snow, purposefully ignoring the vast splatter of red on the snow, to wash his face and hands before going to find his clothes. He carried the deer on his shoulders until it was possible that Stiles could see him and then dragged it across the snow like he wasn't strong enough to carry it easily.

Seeing him Stiles came out, strange wood and leather things strapped to his shoes to make him stand above the snow, to help him. He had a look of absolute delight at the size of the deer that Derek had taken down and it made Derek's chest puff a little. Inside him he could feel the beast, still too large for his skin, unwilling to relinquish control, pleased at having its kill praised by its mate.

Stiles was efficient in butchering it, sending Derek inside to get warm, insisting that there was fresh peppermint tea in the pot on the brazier, you'll be frozen to the bone, he said, I can manage, go spread out some hay for the sheep, shake out the straw mattress, air the furs, all the little daily chores that took up Derek's day.

Perhaps an hour after going into the longhouse, when he had washed the beast from his skin and put on fresh clothes - the ones he had arrived in laundered and dried in the main room, stinking faintly of sheep as everything in the longhouse did, with shards of hay caught on his sleeves, he thought to bring a cup of tea to Stiles who was in one of the outbuildings butchering the deer.

He had stripped to his shirt and looked more adult, with his hair in dark wisps about his head, and he looked pale, as the tip of his pink tongue chased a drop of blood that ran down his arm unto his palm and between his fingers like it was a drop of gravy. Derek cleared his throat and brought in the tea. Stiles, caught, wiped his hands on a scrap of cloth.

Neither spoke of the matter.

With the weather promising fair for the next few days Stiles declared that they could make the trek to the village on the other side of the mountain. He had made a pair of snowshoes, like his own, for Derek and heaped the wool clothes that he had made, the skeins of thread, dyed and undyed, and the rough pelt of the deer, with the flesh side scraped clean in a first pass, rubbed with salt and then packed in snow.

It was a long walk, dragging the sledge behind them, but Stiles had spoken truly when he said the weather would remain clear, the sun bright and pale in the sky and the snow soft and pliable under the wooden runners of the sled, packed high as it was.

"The people further north," Stiles said, "use dogs to pull their sleds, but dogs don't like me overmuch, I can't even get a cat to stay in the longhouse to eat the rats."

Derek didn't say anything because dogs didn't like him much either, but in all the time he had spent in the longhouse he had not seen a single rat. Maybe they didn't like Stiles either.

They didn't talk much for the journey, glad to be out of the confines of the longhouse which they used as a barn and a sanctum, and the small upper room with its tapestries red that protected them from the judgement of the world as surely as if they were both back in their mother's womb.

Outside was vast, it seemed to stretch on forever, even the foothills that they descended didn't alter the wall of white with a pale blue sky and the occasional tree was like a black spar reaching upward.

The noise of the village reached them before the sight. There were laughing children and adults calling out to each other and animals bleating, cows lowing and Stiles took a huge breath through his mouth, pushing down the _nalbinded_ strip of cloth he wore wrapped around his face to do so. The snow worked to dampen the smell but any group of people in close proximity had a stink all of their own, the middens buried at the edge of town, the animal dung, cookfires, rotting hay, cooking meat and pulses with the hint of expensive spice and dried herbs, old sweat, cut pine, it created a melange of human closeness that was unique to each place that Derek had been. Amsterdam had smelled damp, Novgorod had smelled of smoked fish, a smell that reminded him of home, and the iodine smell of the docks with the floating trash that polluted every dock. This small village, the name of which Stiles told him and he immediately forgot, was unique and exactly the same as all the others. There was even incense and the tolling of a bell on the hour from a small stone church.

The first time he heard it Derek froze and Stiles put his hand on his arm and smiled and he was reassured. The hard-eyed men were part of the church, but the church was shattered and he did not know of which shard this chapel was part.

There were hunters, sitting on benches on raised platforms outside one of the houses, there was a brazier in front of them as they fletched arrows and the gaze that they gave Derek was both suspicious and hungry at the same time. They wore their hair long, gathered in braids to keep it from their faces and beards that reached to their chests. They wore jopula, like Derek himself, but with heavy furs draped over it and they drank and spat and watched Derek like he was a beast they wished to hunt.

Derek felt that every eye there judged him: the womenfolk with their labours; the men who worked the sawmill whose gaze followed like smoke; the hunters with their blatant gaze; the two maidens who smiled when Stiles bought bread but whose smile never reached their eyes; the priest whose eyes were hard as flint.

Stiles charmed them all with an easy delight. It was as if they could not see how his skin was so pale and his eyes darted around like gnats. They saw that he was animated and waved his hands when he talked, accepting baked delights with lip-smacking and praise, gaining the attention of the four children who were trying to move a goat who was currently chewing on the roof of a wood store and offering that Derek might be able to tug on the rope around its neck and bring it back to its pasture.

Eager for the opportunity to get away from the eyes of the village Derek agreed.

The goat, called Princess, was not eager to leave her meal and it took him the best part of an hour to lead her back to her pasture but it allowed Derek away from his fear because calling the goat names and cursing its dam and entire bloodline took up all of his attention.

When he was done he found that Stiles had sold all of the thread and knitwork and in its place had stacked a bag of oats, a large stoneware jug and other things that he considered necessary, and told Derek it was time to go back. The old men looked at Derek and judged him before they told him that hunters had gone missing in these parts, vanished from the forest like they had never been there, and that there were rumours of a draugr hunting but such things were nonsense. One told Stiles, in a conspiratorial whisper, that his lad had seen a long wolf the size of a horse on the snow, Stiles had laughed and said it was impossible for wolves hunted in packs but he'd keep an eye out to protect his sheep.

Feeling the hard eyes of the hunters on their stoop heavy as millstones on his back, Derek agreed, wondering if he had been the one to take the hunter from the forest, and sure he had been the giant wolf seen on the snow.

It was dark when they got back to the longhouse and the sheep were frantic, only settling once Stiles had run his hand the length of each face and told them all that he loved them even if, and this was said with affection in his voice, sheep were the stupidest animal on Midgard by some measure.

Once they were calmed, with fresh hay and their ground brushed out, the old straw put aside to dry, Stiles washed his hands and prepared to cook, carving the bread, freshly baked that morning, into thick slices which he covered with real butter and not mutton dripping. Whilst the mutton and peas cooked in its pot they gorged themselves on the luxury of bread and butter and Stiles revealed that the stoneware jug was full of what he called _Wikinger Blod Melomel,_ which turned out to be a mead with some of the sweetness smoothed by cherries and highly alcoholic.

Stiles watched every drop that Derek drank licking his lips.

With his belly full and the mead rich in his blood Derek was drunk, it would not last, but he had good company and good food and he was content, the mead softening his fear like butter, and he smiled as Stiles led him upstairs to bed, tugging off his boots and kissing him on the forehead so Derek could fall asleep to his smile.

Derek woke to pain. His entire back was aflame with it and it took him a moment to realise that this was not a dream. He was thrown on the floor of the fabric-covered room he shared with Stiles and Stiles was sat across his hips, and with his teeth he was tugging away strips of meat from Derek's shoulder with uneven jerks. He was also crying. Stiles' face was bloody, and his teeth sharp like broken glass, with eyes of gold on gold. He looked like himself and utterly different, white skinned, black haired and with teeth of broken glass and hard metal eyes. The pain was sharp and immediate, the jerk of the flesh tearing and then giving way with the itch of healing following it, and there was a wet smacking sound of Stiles chewing, unable to close his mouth with his new dentition.

Splatters of blood, of Derek's blood, covered the walls and he wondered, briefly, for it was hard to think through the pain, if he had been drugged. 

Stiles was naked but different, changed, unearthly like something out of the stories of this place, inhuman but oh so lovely and covered with blood the colour of the mead they had drunk. But where he had ripped and torn it felt like ice pressed against his skin and held there until the pain bloomed like a snowflake along Derek's skin and nerves.

"What _volva_ touched you here," he said and ran the tip of what felt like a claw or a talon across Derek's back, "leaving her mark - for what was, what is and what will come to pass, what did you give her?" He was no longer human, paler even than the snow, with limbs strung out like thread, with joins like knots. What Derek could see was monstrous, not a beast like he was, but something different, something hungry. He moved strangely in a spindly spidery fashion and his skin was cold as ice. 

He wrapped his hand, his fingers seemed tipped with glass claws and wet with blood, Derek's blood, around Derek's throat. "What did you give her that you couldn't give me?" 

Derek said nothing, "I brought you here, I intended to fatten you up to eat you where you stood but you are _more_ ," it was whispered in his ear with a mouth sweet with blood, "something other, something old, and she stole you from me, what did she give you in exchange for this." The other hand splayed across Derek's back and Derek didn't know why. His hand burned like a brand, the weight of it, the promise of it and the threat of it. It owned and it demanded and it scratched at the skin it had left unblemished, a circle in the space between his shoulder blades. Two fingers spread on one point, another two further out and the thumb marking the third, like a strange triangle. Then with the tip of a claw, black as jet, he traced a curve from the centre outwards along one point, then the second and then the third tracing a design Derek could not see and had not known of.

"She named me," the words came out through the pain, through the miracle of healing, "she called me by my name."

Stiles chewed and swallowed before he continued, "And what name did she give you? What name did she bind you with to save you from me?"

Derek thought of the white-haired witch in her cabin by the river and what she had said. " _Vargr_." He told Stiles. " _Vargr_ , line of _Loki Firebringer_ , warrior of he who would swallow the sun when _Ragnarok_ came, commander in the war against _One Eye_ and first among wolves."

Stiles sat back and laughed, it was a belly laugh deep and long from the very depth of him. He swung his leg over Derek's hip and crawled around on limbs that seemed overlong and held Derek's face up with his glass tipped fingers and Derek could see his eyes were golden and his teeth were gone, replaced by jagged pieces of glass, sweet with blood that covered his chin and the front of his chest, white like snow under the blood - under Derek's blood.

"Not _Vargr_ ," he said, _"_ _større_ _Vargr,"_ he had a wicked grin like a knife slash. 

Derek could feel the muscle healing, the strands growing and reforming to what it was before Stiles dug his claws back underneath the skin and tore away another handful with a pain sharp as ice. "Show me," Stiles urged, licking at Derek's lips with his wicked tongue, "show me."

And the beast that twisted under Derek's skin, so different from what he had known as a child, did, tearing him open to reveal what he had repressed so fiercely.

Below them the sheep bleated out their horror, stamping their feet and butting against the ropes that held them in place, smelling the blood and the transformation and the predator among them but Stiles just grinned with eyes of gold on gold, like a metal coin melted in a fire, and fingers and teeth of ragged glass. He was spindle limbed and snow coloured, naked and covered in blood and Derek had never seen anything so very beautiful.

The beast, that malformed monster that he became when the moon was fat, licked at the gore on his face, curling along his throat and snapping its teeth beside his ear as Stiles laughed and twined his arms around his throat, cocking his hips in an invitation to the creature that Derek had become. " _større_ _Vargr_ ," he said and it was a plea, a welcome; a demand and desire all at once. "You are," Derek waited for the insult, the fear, the revulsion, "magnificent." It never came.

"I heal," he said with the beast's mouth, although it was almost unintelligible, his mouth no longer shaped for human words, "yours," he said, "yours. Eat me, consume me, make me part of you, part of somewhere I am never alone, somewhere I am apart from the men with the hard eyes and the cold, make me part of you, make me the muscles stretched out on your limbs, the blood in your cold veins, the stirring in your balls and the thing that makes you hard. I want to be all of it.”

And sat crouched on limbs too long for a human Stiles smiled with a mouth that was open from ear to ear. “You heal,” he said it like it was a wonderment, and he licked his lips, thin now like a crack in bark in a mouth that stretched out from ear to ear to hold his new teeth, jagged and large like pieces of glass, delighted to find a meal he could never finish, someone he would never have to snatch in the night away from prying eyes, enough for the need for human flesh to be sated and replenished. “You heal.” Saying that he sprung forward pushing Derek back as easily as pushing away one of the sheep and bit down on the bare pectoral and tore, and Derek's scream was indistinguishable from those of pleasure.

"What are you?" Derek asked, claws embedded into Stiles' back, to hold him in place, to allow him to feast and Stiles said a single word but it was not the one that Derek expected.

" _Jotun_."

\---

  
  


The hunter had eyes like steel, and wearing a tabard with a hart bound cross adorned with a fleur de Lys and a star as he listened patiently to what the villagers told him about the ruined longhouse and the _draugr_ that lived there that snatched their sheep, leaving them half-eaten in the snow, and how it ran with a beast the likes of which that they had never seen, back hunched and as large as an elk with teeth the size of a thumb. It had taken a deer right out of the field, carrying it like a bitch might carry a pup, stomach ripped out of it and left to draw vermin and other predators there in the snow. He paid a _pennig_ for each story, moving North, ever north after his prey but listened to stories of _ljosalfar_ luring children away, miners lost to _svartalfar_ before they brought down the roof of the mines to seal them away, _nock_ crying out in the forest with the voices of children, luring people to the river. He heard of stolen livestock and a troll that could carry a cow in each hand as it walked through the valleys.

For a mug of ale old men past their prime told him about how this land was created, how the _Aesir_ fought with any and every race and that their leavings were trapped behind in the crumpled lands, the mountains and the _fjords_ , when they were driven out and that this, in all of God’s creation was a land of monsters. There were those he had heard of before but others too, maidens who swam in the rivers luring young men to their deaths, women who came to campfires and lured away men turning to a reindeer and stomping them to death if they had been unfaithful, women who sat at the river's edge and wept for children that they had lost and would snatch children and it was never said that the child had been taken by wolves or by the _nock_ or the _alfar_ , but that the child had been a fool to wander there.

The hunter nodded and said that the Church knew of such abominations, that it had heard them, and how they needed to act together to drive it out of their lands, that they would be blessed for any action that they gave towards such ends, and if they lived in the longhouse there would be nothing for it but to burn it down and cut down the monsters when they fled the fire for such fire was holy and nothing turned from the face of God could abide it. For there was no greater abomination in the eyes of god than men who lay with men and what were they if not monsters.

When the fire had receded, in remaining pockets and glowing embers and the snow fell in fat flurries on the scorched black limbs and rafters, when the sheep bleated angrily from the edges of the field- with a few of the mob trying to gather them back up because sheep were valuable- there was a sense of disappointment for there were no bodies in the ruins. The hunter was first into the ruins, turning over burned beams and kicking up ash so it swirled around his ankles, he had a half bow with an arrow nocked in case anything came surging forward but nothing did. Only one thing caught his eye. Set into the mountain was a huge iron door carved with a mighty tree, leading to a barrow and so heavy it took five men to open it, but the beams which had once held it closed had burned away. Such barrows, he knew, were full of gold which could go back to the church, it always seemed to need funds in its war against the false pope in Rome. 

A shepherd had used the building as a makeshift barn he decided, and was abroad gathering forage for his beasts. They had burned it down but the entire adventure was not a loss. He would empty the barrow, for heathens had no use for grave goods, and send it south, continuing north himself asking about the young man with the grey-green eyes and the quiet manner and paying a _pennig_ for each story of each monster that they brought him. 

  
  



	5. Chapter 5

“Journeys end in lovers meeting; I have spent an all but sleepless night, I have told lies and made a fool of myself, and the very air tastes like wine. I have been frightened half out of my foolish wits, but I have somehow earned this joy; I have been waiting for it for so long.”  
 **Shirley Jackson** , _The Haunting of Hill House_

  
It had been a hard winter but sometimes hard winters gave the best hunting, Trygve knew, and he had been tracking this boar for the best part of the morning, his spear held firm. Tracking boar was hard in the best of weather but his family was hungry and the boar would see them through to spring, a fat old porker who had seen his share of fights. With his faithful hound, a mastiff he called Tove, beside him he could take this boar, but tracking it through the knee deep snow, even with snow shoes, was exhausting. He was coming up on the creek and he hoped that the beast had turned around when it saw the frozen surface because it would be difficult enough to drag the dead boar back without having to negotiate the thin ice.

He stopped where he stood, using the weight of his hand to calm Tove who had started to growl deep in her throat. 

It looked like a tableau, like the sort of painting the church had behind its altar, but no church would hold such an image.

A figure, elongated and pale as snow was tearing into the open stomach cavity of a bear, the boar he was hunting had bolted along the creek seeing this and not wanting to be an entree. Beside the figure was a wolf, if such a beast could be called such, tall as a horse and as broad as a beer keg with eyes that burned red like the embers of a fire. They were both face deep in the creature and the humanoid figure looked up and his eyes were like coins with a design inset and Trygve thought he might loose his bowels, but with a smile that stretched from ear to ear, red with blood and teeth like shards of mica, the creature went back to its meal and left Trygve to hunt his boar.


	6. Addendum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I added a lot of detail to the later part of the story with Stiles making the transition more obvious and answering the question of what he was, adding nearly 2k here and there, I'm adding this to relist it at the front of the queue because of those changes which should solve some of the issues people had with the ending

I added a lot of detail to the later part of the story with Stiles making the transition more obvious and answering the question of what he was, adding nearly 2k here and there, I'm adding this to relist it at the front of the queue because of those changes which should solve some of the issues people had with the ending


End file.
